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By now everybody knows and understands the cloud – but the opportunity, as cognitive computing becomes more established, is only just starting to emerge. IBM’s cloud is enabling businesses to do and achieve more by offering chunks of artificial intelligence to add to existing solutions. Companies can now do things and deliver offerings that were not previously possible.

Take our client, Whirlpool for example. In the past, buying and owning a washing machine was a straightforward, linear process. You’d see one you liked, buy it either online or in person, it would be delivered and plumbed in and you’d get it fixed when parts wore out, either under warranty or later at your own expense. Then as economics dictated, you’d replace it and recycle as much of it as you could.

Thanks to IBM’s cloud technology there is now a refinement. A web-connected washing machine will feed back information to the cloud, anonymised, and feed back on how customers are using their machines. It will then recalibrate itself based on this information and actually improve its own operation as it ages, extending its life and improving performance at the same time.

It works with processes as well. The National Health Service Blood and Transplant Service used IBM Business Process Manager and Operational Decision Manager on Cloud and Blueworks Live™ to build an agile development platform for modifying allocation schemes to reflect the latest research and data. The result has been streamlined delivery; as the system learned to adapt to changing needs and anticipate them. This resulted in better utilisation of donated organs in the UK and more available resource, as the NHS got to focus on health rather than technology.

There are many such examples. What’s happening is that as the technology learns to think for itself, it starts to interrogate the data in ways the human mind might not have imagined; it takes the information, looks at it and starts drawing conclusions. The result is a better, technologised world – and it can help your business too.